Paragraph stack feature request

Any chance of incorporating the ability to have a drop cap at the beginning of a paragraph?

I’ve always thought this was a simple, elegant way of introducing a bit of style onto a text heavy page.

Thanks

Rob

Because one of my sites emulates old newspapers I created drop capitals, justification and indents via CSS. Ran into issues with “outdents”. In the end I cut my own stack but that’s another story.

If drop captials were to be incorporated I’d like to see text justification as well (i.e. like newpapers).

So, funny story… I had worked on a drop cap feature long ago for the Paragraph stack. In fact I’d worked up a whole slew of features to cram into that stack. But I got to testing and thinking more about it. The Paragraph stack ends up being used over, and over and over on a page. The more features that are in a stack, any stack, the slower it operates in Edit Mode.

I’m sure we’ve all used a stack that is a “kitchen sink” stack where it contains every feature under the sun, right? Those stacks addons make Edit Mode in Stacks a real drag. If you start adding more and more of those stacks to the page it gets even worse. Unbearable even.

So knowing that the Paragraph stack will be used in spades throughout a page I decided to not add those extra features, and stick to the things already in the stack for now. Adding something to that stack needs to be a feature that will be used quite often and not just once or twice on a site I think. That drop cap code for example that might be small, but it will only be used for one or two paragraphs on a page. That code though will live inside of every Paragraph stack you use though, just sitting there unused. This is the goal behind Foundry’s modular stacks as a whole by the way.

Anyway, I like the idea of a drop cap, and even coded on it before. It might just be that it needs to be a separate stack. Maybe a drop cap paragraph stack or something.

You’re going to hate me on this one. While I worked at a daily metro newspaper for many years, this is feature you’ll probably not ever see in a stack from me. Justified text on websites is really rough looking, IMHO. It is made worse by responsive web design. While it works for some print publications in some cases, I don’t think it is an appropriate thing for websites.

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Thanks for the explanation. I’d like to see a Drop Cap stack, especially one that allowed you to colour the drop cap.

Rob

I’ll put this down as a stack request in my notebook. I think this could be a fun stack. I’ll think on ways to make this stack useful in other ways. Perhaps make it a one-off Paragraph stack. Maybe with the caveat that it is for use for special use cases, but that most of the paragraphs should be built using the normal Paragraph stack, while this new stack would be for one-off fancy effects.

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Hate? No! Unless you tell me you hate dogs then I might change my mind! :grinning: The only reason I mentioned it was because where I use drop capitals is on a site that is made to specifically to look like old newspaper print. As mentioned I put together my own stack for that site so I’m good!

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